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Spain has become one of Europe’s cheapest power markets

janrosenow.substack.com

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Re: Spain has become one of Europe’s cheapest power markets

#71

Post by alecco »

jfernandezr wrote: post #3
alecco wrote: post #2

> Damian Cortinas, chair of ENTSO-E’s board, told the Financial Times that “the issue is not about renewables” but about the grid’s ability to manage “fast voltage variations” that can destabilise the system. Unusual oscillations triggered a cascade of plant disconnections, and grid managers lost control. The real lesson is not that Spain has gone too far on wind and solar, YES THEY DID, they went as far as making nu…

Spain's blackout was exactly 1 year ago, no other blackouts since. And the mix of nuclear stayed almost the same. That was not a stabilization problem per-se, but the companies that had to do the stabilization just didn't although the were being paid for that. Please read the final report.

The government refused to protect nuclear plants when prices went negative for a long time, so of course they were turned off because the companies were losing money. That was the obvious plan all along.

And no more blackouts because now they are running nuclear 24/7 to keep things stable.

And again, it's not completely Spain's government fault as it obviously came from the EU and their anti-nuclear stance.

Re: Spain has become one of Europe’s cheapest power markets

#72

Post by crote »

pyrale wrote: post #52
ragebol wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spain's neighbors could also have lower energy prices with more interconnection to Spain. The whole network diversifies, which would be more beneficial for Europe as a whole.

The issue is that Spain has three interconnected neighbours (France, Portugal and Morocco) and all of them are overflowing with electricity. The best candidate for lowering prices would be France, but France would most likely re-export that electricity to other countries, and paying to build up the internal grid to carry electricity that is neither bought by nor sold to French actors isn't very attractive. Ideally Sp…

There has already been a serious proposal for a HVDC cable from Morocco to the UK. If that's possible, why not go for Spain-Germany?

Re: Spain has become one of Europe’s cheapest power markets

#73

Post by iot_devs »

pyrale wrote: post #27

The author's point is that Spain's electricity is very cheap compared to other European countries thanks to its great electricity mix, etc. The reality is that Spain's electricity is cheap because it is relatively insulated from Europe's core network, because its interconnections with other countries are limited. In financial words, there is a spread with the rest of Europe because the ways to arbitrage that spread a…

I mean it is hard to argue with the number - I believe everyone will benefit for more interconnections. More energy to Europe, more money to Spain.

And for the numbers it seems obvious that renewables are a fundamental part of the picture.

Re: Spain has become one of Europe’s cheapest power markets

#74

Post by scythe »

PaulKeeble wrote: post #7

The past few years has also had Solar continuing to decrease in price so its increasingly going to be the primary choice. On top of that battery prices have been plummeting too so that now Solar + battery is cheaper than other options like Nuclear and especially Gas. Most of the EU will be running on Wind and Solar in the coming years, its a change that is now rapidly occuring based entirely on the rare economics. So…

>On top of that battery prices have been plummeting too so that now Solar + battery is cheaper than other options like Nuclear and especially Gas.

I'm a little bit sad that pumped hydro doesn't get more attention in the discussion. It might be too late for it to matter, with improvements in battery prices and ongoing lithium discoveries. But that only underscores the fact that it should have been allowed to matter twenty years ago. Utilities have slow-walked solar all around the world because of concerns about the grid stability, which has been well within the reach of pumped hydropower to fix since many years ago. In fact major pumped hydropower projects were mostly carried out in the United States during the nuclear power optimism era.

It is a little destructive to construct pumped hydro reservoirs. But it generally isn't as damaging as a conventional hydroelectric dam. The reason lies in the source of the water. In a conventional dam, you need a lot of water flowing in from up high, so you dam a major river near its lower cataracts. This disrupts the migration of fish and animals along the river and impacts the whole ecosystem of the rather large drainage basin upstream, and disrupts the migration of fish. But when a closed-loop pumped storage reservoir is created above an existing lake, usually a much less important stream is selected. Its immediate valley is still inundated, but the area of effect is much less. It does tend to prolong the use of the existing dam, but we are already preserving basically all existing dams.

It might still be appropriate in some places where imports are less affordable like Latin America or it might appeal to protectionists in the West. In general, hydro is usually cheap.

Re: Spain has become one of Europe’s cheapest power markets

#75

Post by toast0 »

crote wrote: post #72
pyrale wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is that Spain has three interconnected neighbours (France, Portugal and Morocco) and all of them are overflowing with electricity. The best candidate for lowering prices would be France, but France would most likely re-export that electricity to other countries, and paying to build up the internal grid to carry electricity that is neither bought by nor sold to French actors isn't very attractive. Ideally Sp…

There has already been a serious proposal for a HVDC cable from Morocco to the UK. If that's possible, why not go for Spain-Germany?

Hvdc in the ocean requires way less right of way than hvdc over land. Running oceanic hvdc from Spain to Germany might have some trouble in the English channel where it would be in territorial waters.

Spain to UK might make more sense.

Re: Spain has become one of Europe’s cheapest power markets

#76

Post by crote »

badpun wrote: post #16
pydry wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1/5th the price of nuclear. Probably when combined with batteries it is half the price. There are some colder areas in northern europe especially where solar doesnt work as well but they also tend to be better served for hydro (which can also store power).

How much would it cost to build out batteries which cover entire continent's electricy needs for say three weeks (as there can be 2-3 week lulls of no wind and no sun in Europe in the winter)? Cause that sounds like a lot of batteries. Not to mention, if a freak 4 week lull occurs, we'll go back to Middle Ages for a week.

"But what if thing thing that never happens were to happen?"

We'd probably go deep into hydro, fire up every gas peaker plant, and through skyrocketing prices incentivize everyone to switch to emergency diesel generators where possible.

You're talking about a once-in-100+-years event. We'll deal with it the same way we dealt with the various oil crises.

Re: Spain has become one of Europe’s cheapest power markets

#77

Post by citrin_ru »

fundatus wrote: post #24
alecco wrote: post #2

> Damian Cortinas, chair of ENTSO-E’s board, told the Financial Times that “the issue is not about renewables” but about the grid’s ability to manage “fast voltage variations” that can destabilise the system. Unusual oscillations triggered a cascade of plant disconnections, and grid managers lost control. The real lesson is not that Spain has gone too far on wind and solar, YES THEY DID, they went as far as making nu…

> made the EU leadership turn and now they want nuclear They don't _actually_ want nuclear, luckily it's just lip service. Because it doesn't solve the problem surfaced by the US-Israel-Iran war: You'd still be dependent on other countries for your (nuclear) fuel needs.

Dependency on nuclear fuel is less of a problem because you don't need to re-fuel a station often. Lack of gas creates a much more urgent problem.

Re: Spain has become one of Europe’s cheapest power markets

#78

Post by toast0 »

mhh__ wrote: post #33
pyrale wrote: post #27

The author's point is that Spain's electricity is very cheap compared to other European countries thanks to its great electricity mix, etc. The reality is that Spain's electricity is cheap because it is relatively insulated from Europe's core network, because its interconnections with other countries are limited. In financial words, there is a spread with the rest of Europe because the ways to arbitrage that spread a…

This is a lesson in how electricity isn't really a commodity e.g. it's very very difficult to send some electrons from one side of the world to another.

Commodities are traded on type, quantity, and place. Oil of a specific grade at a specific port. Pork bellies (no longer traded) of a specific grade in Chicago. Etc.

If you want the commodities elsewhere, you have to provide for transportation. Same for electricity. Grids (or grid sections) where supply outpaces local demand and transmission to remote grids can hit negative spot prices even when neighboring grids haven't.

Re: Spain has become one of Europe’s cheapest power markets

#79

Post by maartenscholl »

pyrale wrote: post #27

The author's point is that Spain's electricity is very cheap compared to other European countries thanks to its great electricity mix, etc. The reality is that Spain's electricity is cheap because it is relatively insulated from Europe's core network, because its interconnections with other countries are limited. In financial words, there is a spread with the rest of Europe because the ways to arbitrage that spread a…

This is an interesting point about energy market balancing but it has causality backwards. Spain simply has a better energy mix than Germany, no matter how big the spread between the countries is as a function of interconnectedness.

Re: Spain has become one of Europe’s cheapest power markets

#80

Post by pyrale »

crote wrote: post #72
pyrale wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is that Spain has three interconnected neighbours (France, Portugal and Morocco) and all of them are overflowing with electricity. The best candidate for lowering prices would be France, but France would most likely re-export that electricity to other countries, and paying to build up the internal grid to carry electricity that is neither bought by nor sold to French actors isn't very attractive. Ideally Sp…

There has already been a serious proposal for a HVDC cable from Morocco to the UK. If that's possible, why not go for Spain-Germany?

Spain has also floated he idea of a HVDC cable to the UK, but it's never happened.

Sometimes, headlines are out of control.

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